WIRELESS HEADPHONES may be music to an audiophile’s ears but, until now, the compromise for being cable-free was poor-quality sound.
A Belfast company has developed digital audio encoding technology designed to solve this problem and has just licensed it to Sennheiser, one of the premium headphone brands.
The codec (coder-decoder) developed by Apt-X streams high-quality stereo sound over Bluetooth wireless connections from laptops, mobile phones and portable music players. Sennheiser is using the codec in two new high-end consumer Bluetooth headphones that will be available on the high street and online from this month.
Previous efforts to use Bluetooth in headphones were poorly received by consumers, according to Stephen Wray, Apt-X vice-president of licensing. “The perception was, ‘if it’s Bluetooth, it won’t sound good’.”
Apt-X originally developed technology for audio broadcast and had been researching a superior compression scheme to the existing codec for Bluetooth. The resulting Apt-X codec “makes Bluetooth now as good as a wire in terms of quality”, Mr Wray says.
The deal with Sennheiser is “massively important” for the company, he adds.
Apt-X spent four years researching the algorithm and its development coincides with the growing popularity of wireless audio, not just in music players and phones but also in home stereo systems.
Sennheiser plans to introduce more products using Apt-X technology in the coming months and other mobile-phone and laptop manufacturers are expected to follow suit. “Most of the key consumer brands have licensed Apt-X or have plans to license it,” Mr Wray says.
Apt-X employs 20 people at its headquarters in Belfast and business development office in California. While the endorsement of Sennheiser should boost Apt-X’s profile considerably, Mr Wray says the company will not expand rapidly.
“We’ll stay quite niche and stay with the ‘ingredient brand’ strategy,” citing Dolby as an audio company that licenses its technology.
“They have around 100 people based in San Francisco and they’re phenomenally profitable. Intellectual property licensing is the best business model you can possibly imagine but it’s hard to get it going.”
Having technology included in mass-market products helps overcome this difficulty. “We’ll get a royalty on each headphone and speaker that uses our technology. It’s a small amount but the volumes will be such that it does get interesting,” he says.
